The Belt

Audi Moved Product Definition to Shanghai and Called It a Reversal

by

Audi and SAIC opened the AUDI Innovation and Technology Center in Shanghai on 5 November, giving a joint venture entity end-to-end authority over the brand’s Chinese models from concept definition to start of production. The facility employs roughly 300 engineers and marks a structural change in how a German premium manufacturer develops cars for its … Read more

Europe Kept the Combustion Engine Alive Past 2035 by Nine Points

by

The European Parliament’s environment committee voted on 4 November to weaken the European Union’s 2035 car emissions target, converting what had been presented as a fixed deadline into a negotiable number. If the amended proposal survives the December plenary and talks with member states, manufacturers will no longer face a legal requirement to sell only … Read more

RoboSense Puts a 500,000-Unit Lidar Line Inside a Shenzhen Tower Block

by

RoboSense has turned on a fully automated production line for digital lidar in Nanshan district, Shenzhen, and the number that matters is not the capacity but the headcount. Total assembly on the new line runs on six operators, working alongside the system rather than feeding it. The line sits in the Honghualing base of Nanshan … Read more

Shenzhen’s UBTech Puts Robot Joints on the Shelf, From 300Nm Down to 40 Grams

by

The humanoid argument has moved from whether the machine can walk to whether the parts can be bought. Xinfenglong, a joint venture that combines UBTech’s embodied AI engineering with Fenglong’s precision manufacturing, released a robot joint product matrix on 3 November covering four families aimed at humanoids, mobile robots and industrial applications. The Xinfenglong joint … Read more

Robot Data Sells for RMB 1,000 an Hour and Costs RMB 30 to Make

by

Jianzhi Robotics completed a USD 100 million A-plus round in the third quarter, announced on 2 November. The Beijing company was founded on 29 May 2025 and positions itself as infrastructure for data and evaluation in embodied AI and world models. Fourteen months from incorporation to a valuation widely expected to exceed USD 1 billion, … Read more

One Million Hours of Robot Training Data a Month, at a Tenth of the Cost

by

Every large-scale advance in AI has rested on a data supply that already existed. Language models consumed two decades of web pages and code. Autonomous driving drew on shadow mode fleets, with Tesla collecting from millions of customer cars without organising a single collection session. Embodied AI has no such supply. Two years of teleoperation … Read more